Burlington grad pens book for 'musical-theater nerds'

From left: Mika Duncan, Kate Wetherhead and Adam Grimes in a production of “Guys and Dolls” at Burlington High School in the early 1990s. The three grads have all moved on to careers in acting, with Duncan and Wetherhead based in New York, and Grimes in Los Angeles.(Photo: COURTESY ADAM GRIMES)

Burlington High School alumna Kate Wetherhead is not just a Broadway veteran, she's now a published author. Wetherhead, who has performed on Broadway in "Legally Blonde: The Musical" and "The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee," co-wrote the young-readers' book "Jack & Louisa: Act 1" with Andrew Keenan-Bolger. The two stage actors tell the fictional tale of a couple of "MTNs," or musical-theater nerds; Jack is a Broadway veteran who at age 12 moves with his family to Ohio, where he meets Louisa, a middle-schooler with her own big-stage dreams.

Wetherhead responded by email last week to questions from the Burlington Free Press about "Jack & Louisa," which was published in February by Penguin Random House.

Kate Wetherhead: I received an email in the early spring of 2012 from Jordan Hamessley, an associate editor at Penguin Young Readers, explaining that not only was she was a fan of our (mine and Andrew Keenan-Bolger's) web series, "Submissions Only," but that she'd gotten everyone else in her office hooked on the show. She went on to inquire as to whether we'd be interested in writing a children's book series about kids who love theater, so I forwarded the email to Andrew, who was (of course) as interested as I. About two weeks later we met with Jordan and her two bosses, and they pitched us the idea for the book: two middle-school age kids, a boy and girl, who do theater together.

BFP: The chapters alternate between Jack' point of view and Louisa's point of view. How did you and Andrew go about writing the book?

KW: It was Penguin's idea that Andrew write Jack's chapters and I write Louisa's chapters; beyond that, though, the story was up to us. Our first step in coming up with the idea was to swap stories from our childhoods. Very quickly the narrative of "Jack & Louisa: Act 1" took shape, as we realized that drawing from our own life experiences (which were vastly different) would make for a fun and dynamic story. We wrote a comprehensive outline, something that I would recommend to any writer, but certainly to co-writers who are tasked with telling the same story from two different perspectives. It was crucial that Andrew and I have an intimate knowledge of how the events of the story affected both Jack and Louisa, so that when we were writing on our own, we stayed true to those events and the emotional lives of our characters. As we wrote the book, we were in constant communication, making sure everything added up.

BFP: How much of Louisa is fiction and how much of it is really you as a girl growing up in a small town with big Broadway dreams?

KW: Young Kate Wetherhead and Louisa have a lot in common for sure — their passion for performing, their dreams of performing on Broadway, plus their having understanding and supportive parents. I took advantage of every theatrical opportunity that I could while I was growing up in Burlington, and Louisa has the same voracious appetite. Louisa is different from me in that she is coming of age decades after I did, in a time when technology and social media allow her much greater access to Broadway. She's more knowledgeable than I ever was, since she can discover shows, performers, songs, etc. on the Internet. It makes her more savvy, and also more obsessive. When I was Louisa's age, my taste for and knowledge of theater was defined by the shows that I was either in or saw in Burlington, the annual Tony Awards broadcast, and the two trips to see Broadway shows I took over the course of my entire childhood. Louisa is also more bold (and more bossy) than I was with new people. She really harasses Jack in the first part of the book, works hard to convince him of certain things — I don't think I would ever have been as tenacious.

BFP: What do you want readers of the book to come away with?

KW: I hope that readers appreciate the lessons that Jack and Louisa learn about friendship — about how to be supportive, about how to listen, about how to empathize. And I hope that anyone who has developed a love of theater at any early age can see him or herself in these characters, and know that there are lots of people out there who share their passion.

BFP: What's next on your agenda book-wise and/or theater-wise?

KW: Andrew and I have finished "Jack & Louisa: Act 2" and are now just waiting for our copy editors to work their magic; it will be on bookshelves in February 2016. Theater-wise, I'm just waiting for the next gig. Andrew and I are working on a couple new film projects: a short film and (possibly) a brand-new web series. We'll see.....

BFP: You thank Lyric Theatre in the acknowledgments in the book, so you'll probably be thinking of them as they open the musical that you appeared in on Broadway.

KW: Lyric Theatre is the first entity that shaped my view of what theater was; I will always cherish my experiences with Lyric, as both an audience member and an actor. I wish them all the best with "Legally Blonde" — it's such a fun show.

Contact Brent Hallenbeck at 660-1844 or bhallenbeck@freepressmedia.com. Follow Brent on Twitter at www.twitter.com/BrentHallenbeck.